Ruins Greater Than Troy
by Calvin Potterson
Summary: World War IV has devastated the Cal-American Confederacy. Now, at the pinnacle of this tradegy, one man prepares to visit the CAC's greatest heros. Face to face. To prevent disaster. Warning: nuclear scenes, may not be suitable for children!
1. Aftermath

_Ruins Greater Than Troy  
_A/N: Yes, this was definately influenced by Terminator, the title by a line in Arthur C. Clarke's novel . Now for a small plug: Visit www.thehungersite.com & the other sites in the ring everyday. Sign up for free newsletters that also give aid. Heck and check out www.thebirthsite.com/othermenu.html while you're at it, turns out there's 100s of sites like this. Clicking on the company's ads also helps give as well. (Some of the best: Poverty Fighters and MCI LifeSaver, even give to Royal Flyng Doctors in Australia!)Definately use the Against Hunger Surf Bar...donate 1 cup of food every 3 minutes. http://www.againsthunger.org/games/surf/banner.html Thanks and God bless you all! R/R/E!  


**  
January 16, 2127  
Shady Acres, Ohio, Cal-American Confederacy  
  
** Devastation was everywhere.  
The once grandiose capital of the Cal-American Confederacy was destroyed, nuclear disaster was everywhere. Blacked concrete, shattered skyscrapers toppled over like children's toys, even the Presidential Palace itself was nothing more than a package of rubble.   
Fights broke out over food, people died for a scrap of salami. A city that had once boasted seven million, the largest city in the entire world following World War III. The nation that President Watterson had built was gone, vaporized in a single instant.  
All across the globe, there were signs reminencent of this. Hobbes Calvington thought to himself as he fingered his laser hand-rifle firmly. Because that...that....  
Buzzard.  
Suddenly he heard a sound not unlike the klaxons that had once sounded over London in the Battle of Britian. He hit the cracked and crushed pavement, hiding behind the wreckage of an overturned hovercar that had fallen to the sky when the air-burst explosion killed Shady Acres.  
He glanced over the skyshield of the craft, looking at the driver's seat and being forced to avert his eyes. Not focusing on what he had just witnessed he raised the hand-rifle and fired twice, wounding his assilent. He moved on, rushing in the area of the City Triangle.  
He had hit the man, who had rad-burns all of his face, twice in the leg, the poor soul was probably insane firing at whatever he could.  
But then, who wasn't insane these days? The Fourth World War had just taken place, and it was all a bloody accident. The First and Second Wars had been pre-meditated, fought out, battled. The Third and Fourth were simply human errors, compounded upon each other again and again, until computing systems and and a few codes had been transferred.  
In the Third War, one hundred years in 2027, the President of the United States had ordered an atomic strike on Beijing, unaware of the Sino-Russian alliance signed just moments before. He had acted on instinct, unaware of what would happen, believing the pre-emptive strike to be just. Maybe, Calvington thought to himself, just maybe, it had.  
But this war hadn't been.  
After Calvin Watterson, the first Cal-American President and former General of the GROSS Resistance Army, his successors wore corrupt, meaningless...  
Buzzards.  
First was Horatio Grant, then Samantha Silvers, and Jefferson Davis...buzzards, every single one of them. And President Quentyn, the last Cal-American President had ordered an antimatter missile strike against the Byzantine People's Empire. The Byzantines only had nuclear weapons, but even the CAC Defense Command's anti-missile system couldn't swipe all of the atomics from the sky.  
The Middle East and North Africa were atomized by the antimatter bombs, a secret weapon Cal-America had a monopoly on. But other countries had nuclear missiles and bombs, and that was more than enough.  
Oh sure, Quentyn had ordered the sinking of the British Isles and their Neomarxist Republic of London via the remaining antimatter stockpile, after they had bombed New Chicago and Angel City...but what was the point?  
There had been three billion on the planet before the war, six times what it had been after the Third World War a century previous.   
Now, only the Good Lord knew how many people survived on this toxic waste dump of a planet. Hobbes Calvington nervously ran a hand through his hair and hiccupped. A reaction that happened often after the first Byzantine weapons had smashed into Shady Acres on that Black Night of January the Fourteenth, 2127.  
Now, Calvington thought as he bolted through the City Triangle with a solitary goal, praying and hoping that it hadn't too been destroyed by the atomic fire that rose so high into the twilight only two sleepless days previous...the secret project that had been worked on by Calvington himself under General Sam D'Voe's constance guidance...a way to preserve mankind, a way to save the future, a technology so great that it was unmistakable.  
And it had already been created by Calvin Watterson, when he was six years old.   
He raced on the moving sidewalks that had been installed in Shady Acres upon Watterson's takeover of the Old United States government.   
They moved no more.  
Calvington's mind was made up as he raced past First Tiger Street and sped through the ruined Saint Derkins Avenue. He moved past the crashed and parked hovercars, blackened and destroyed, past gang fights and beggars with rad-burns, past crumbling apartment complexes and interactive virtual malls...  
Finally, the Defense Department Headquarters.  
Since the bomb that had been dropped on Shady Acres had been small by Cal-American (and certainly the world of pre-World War Three) and had burst in the air, only the first ninety-seven stories had collasped. The secret project, Operation Wells, had been safely stored in a sub-level area that was safe from nuclear damage.  
He walked in through the glass-shattered door, no need to place his palm on the reader. He raced through the white corridors, past dead bodies, and labcoats, people he knew, occasionally a survivor called out to him.  
He ignored them.  
Hopefully, yes, hopefully, there would be no need for those people to suffer, or the billions killed two days previous. Calvington shot open a door-lock, which whirred and melted under the lazfire. He walked into the room, shut it, felt the cool air-conditioning of the Wells Labortory.  
He walked into the corrugated cardboard chamber, the only brown spot in a room of silver clacking machines, still working away as they crunched numbers. It was bizarre, even absurd, but the nuclear shielding had held, and the Time Machine Mk II, still survived.  
He walked into the chamber.  
He spoke.  
The world flashed green and purple.  
He disappeared.


	2. Premath

**_Ruins Greater Than Troy  
_****_A/N: Calvin and Hobbes are owned by Universal Press Syndicate and Bill Watterson, Hobbes Calvington is my own creation, as is the Cal-American Confederacy. The plot owes some homage to _Terminator_, the title to Arthur C. Clarke. Other than that, and an _X-Files_ influence on the leaf scene, it's mine, you here me all mine! Now for a small plug for a good cause, that doesn't cost a cent (advertisers on the site pay it): Visit www.thehungersite.com & the other sites in the ring everyday. Sign up for free newsletters that also give aid. Heck and check out www.thebirthsite.com/othermenu.html while you're at it, turns out there's 100s of sites like this. Clicking on the company's ads also helps give as well. (Some of the best: Poverty Fighters and MCI LifeSaver, even give to Royal Flyng Doctors in Australia!)Definately use the Against Hunger Surf Bar...donate 1 cup of food every 3 minutes. http://www.againsthunger.org/games/surf/banner.html Thanks and God bless you all! R/R/E!  
_**

  
November 18, 2003  
Shady Acres, Ohio, United States of America  
  
Autumn.  
  
A red and gold leaf danced precariously on a rather skinny branch, hanging on for dear life as the crisp air rushed around it. It seemed as if the gusts of wind were intentionally attempting to shove the leaf to a fall proportionally like jumping off the Chrsyler Building would be for a man.  
  
Finally, the little leaf gave way, and gracefully floated down, bucking and twirling as gravity pulled it further and further in a downward spiral to Mother Earth. It fell peacefully, as though it had always meant to jump. The green grass beckoned out to the wee little leaf, as if it were a center fielder prepared to catch the game-ending fly out.  
  
Suddenly, and without warning, a purple and green flash took place. The leaf attempted to scurry away from the sparks, but to no avail, gravity already had the golden red miracle in its grasp and refused to let go.  
  
Hobbes Calvington appeared slowly, as if he was walking out of the mist and into sunshine and rays for the first time. And indeed, to Hobbes Calvington it appeared that it had been the first time. The last robin of autumn chirped placidly, the wind whistled through his ears, and when he looked up he saw a clear blue sky with only a few fluffy white clouds.  
  
It was what he did not see that impressed him more than what he did see. Calvington fingered his handrifle with interest as he looked around him. The backyard of this household unit extended like fingers of a hand into a great forest, one that Calvington knew as Shady Acres National Park. But the National Park, big as it was (the biggest forest on the planet following the Great Fires after World War Three) was only an eighth of the size of what the backyard opened up too.  
  
Then there was the sky, unlike the horrific orange that was seared into his memory after the apocalypitic events of only two days eariler. He was a surprise to suddenly see blue when he looked up, to hear crows cawing, and the last robin of autumn chirping away diligently.  
  
It was about then that Calvington looked down at his arm and recieved quite a panic. There, embedded in the flesh of his wrist was a fair miracle of fall, a golden-red leaf freshly plucked from a branch. He looked around in worry. How was that possible, how could THAT happen? Then his mind flickered to one of General D'Voe's favorite theories, back when Operation Wells was still in its starting stage.  
  
What if our time-traveler happens to time travel into the exact point of another piece of matter? Say he or she arrives half-way in and half way of a wall? Does the wall explode, or it's moleculor structure just shift? Does the time-warp just fail and return our traveler to the present? Or is it theoretically possible, that under such conditions that the law of physics are repealed and man AND matter are allowed to co-exist in the same moment?  
  
It appeared, Calvington thought as he tried to yank the sucker out of his wrist, to no avail, that the general's wacked third alternative theory had been correct. The leaf was so stuck in his wrist that he could not pull it out, no matter how much pressure he put on it as he attempted to pull a simple leaf out his skin. Finally resigned to his fate, Calvington swung his wrist around a few times, before finally assuring himself that everything worked fine.  
  
Suddenly, and without warning, he heard muffled voices and shuffled footsteps, he tightened his grip on his laser handrifle, and swung around firing two shots into the solid oak that he had materilized next too, as a warning shot to whomever came around the house. Was it possible that some bum from the post-apocalyptic world that he lived in had followed him through the Mk II?  
  
Blue light shot out from the handrifle's muzzle and sliced past a grinning six-year old Calvin and his faithful tiger companion as they rounded the corner of the house in the Round-The-Yard-Backwards-Dash.The lazfire impacted the oak tree that he had morphed next too and hit the trunk in a solid bulls-eye hit. The tree's bark began to actually melt and collaspe, fusing together and setting other branches on fire.  
  
Calvington was only dimly aware of his this as he readjusted his handrifle, and aimed it at the forehead of the six-year old version of the future Cal-American President. He also slightly noticed a worn stuffed tiger next to the child.  
  
I'll be at your window at eight, kid, Calving muttered softly, but gruffly, then added, Mr. President.  
  
And Calvington ran off into the woods, vaguely noticing how the layout of Shady Acres was as it was it 2127, except the buildings were different, less-modern, and...there was no sign whatsoever of a nuclear holocaust....he sped forward to the City Triangle.  
  
Back at Calvin's house, the burning tree caused quite a sensation. After some branches began to fall and hit the lawn, starting a brush-fire, Calvin's dad called 911 and came out armed with a fire extingusher. By the time the fire-engines arrived, the tree had been completely burnt down, and nearly sixty yards of woodland backyard was black soot.  
  
Calvin was sent to his room before he could mention the visitor who hand fired a blue laser beam at the tree, and after reading some old comic books promptly forgot about him as Hobbes did his homework on his magoheny desk.  
  
Calvin stated as he flipped through his comic book, _Terminator 2: Judgment Day_, This is so lame.  
  
Hobbes, the tiger in question, put down his canary yellow number two pencil and looked at the cluttered mess of Calvin's room, and even grinned slightly as he looked at the crude painting of a tiger hanging over Calvin's headboard.  
  
He swiveled the chair towards Calvin, What is?  
  
This stupid plot, he gestured at the cover of his graphic novel, Guy comes from the future to save the globe from thermonuclear armageaddon. How cliche, how boring. Calvin paused as he flung it away, Intellectually discouraging. Low art.  
  
Uh huh, Hobbes murmurred, he looked over at Calvin's alarm clock nervously, he felt his tail get busy and he began to worry in earnest. It was seven fifty-nine, less than a minute before, he shuddered, remembering the lazer bolt that decimated the tree.  
  
There was a knock on the window.  
  
Zero hour had arrived.


	3. Unthinkable

**_Ruins Greater Than Troy_  
**

November 18, 2003  
Shady Acres, Ohio, United States of America  
  
Calvin went to the window with the nonchalant air of someone who has completely forgotten that something utterly terrible and, naturally, potentionally disastorious is about to happen. He helped Hobbes Calvington crawl through the small window, he looked briefly around the room as he searched with penetrating eyes for signs of a possible trap or black operative.  
  
True, it was a ludicrious possibility, but after the Fourth War? Nobody had a right to dismiss something as absurd.  
  
He yanked out his hand laser rifle and pointed it slowly around the room, first at a sweating Calvin, and than at a stuffed tiger. Slowly, finally, Hobbes Calvington put down the laser-arm.  
  
W-who are you? Calvin asked, somewhat shakenly.   
  
Calvington looked down on the blond-haired child, looking into the young steely gaze of the man who had issued the Decree of Abolition, written the New Constitution, and been the Confederacy's President for twenty-two years.  
  
The question isn't who I am, Calvington answered softly, It is who you are...will be. I am from the future, from the year 2127, Calvin rolled his eyes and gave his tiger a decided _What a nut!_ look, Calvington chose to ignore this, In my future, you Calvin Watterson, you, saved the peoples of the Abolished Union following the Third World War. You formed the great nation that became the Cal-American Confederacy, he rambled on, And now...Quentyn screwed it all up. Launched our antimatter stockpile at London and Byzantium...  
  
He looked into the disbelieving eyes of the future President. You seized command of the United States Armed Forces in the aftermath of the nuclear disaster. You lead the GROSS Army on Washington. Your men and women who fought for the salvation of the US secured the ruins of the once-great cities of America. Then you set up a new democracy, the GROSS Assembly, wrote the Decree of Abolition, forever ceasing the operations of the United States and nationalizing all resources; you moved the capital here, to Shady Acres...the Athens of the post-apocalyptic world...  
  
Calvin Watterson's eyes still held that innocence, not the hardened gaze of the holoportraits of the first Cal-American President. Those eyes flicked around and finally settled on his stuffed tiger. Calvington was annoyed, here he was trying to stave the world from a future nuclear/antimatter holocaust, and the future commander-in-chief of his great nation was looking at a stuffed animal.  
  
Calvin said while staring at the tiger, and Calvington's head immediately moved to look at Calvin, Why do you believe this nut?  
  
There was a silence, and then Calvin spoke again, It's Skynet all over again...this nut has seen to many movies. Imagine, Hobbes, me...a great re-known leader....but this is crazy!  
  
As the silence deepened, Calvington began to remember something, something he had learned in the history e-texts while he went to Watterson High in Shady Acres. The national symbol of the Confederacy was a tiger, because President Watterson had a good-luck charm' of sorts that was a raggedy stuffed version of the national animal. He had always had this tiger, since he was born, his teacher, Mrs. Adams, had droned on, and seemed to believe it was real, probably a physcological flaw from the aftereffects of the Third World War. Apparently he often told his Cabinet that if you see the world my way, you'd see him.  
  
Hobbes was also the name of a suburb of Shady Acres, where Calvington had recieved his Christian name, but he also remembered something else. That Hobbes had been the name of the tiger...he looked over to the chair, and to his surpressed disbelief, a live tiger sat there, chatting amibly.  
  
-expect a raving lunatic to know where you live? You've never seen the man before have you?  
  
Shock swept through the limbs of Hobbes Calvington, and his knees shook. He slowly looked from Calvin to the tiger, whose tail twitched almost conversationally. He was delusional. He rubbed his eyes, and looked back and forth again.   
  
Calvington stared at Hobbes,   
  
Hobbes declared, That proves it! He knows I'm real, so therefore he must be from a future were he learned about me...because I knew you!  
  
That wasn't nesseceraily true, but he did make Calvin skrunch up his forehead and nod, still skeptically, but conceding the point.  
  
Calvington heaved out his laser hand-rifle, You won't find one of these anywhere in the year 2003.  
  
Finally, Calvin sighed and nodded, giving in. Then, all of a sudden, he brightened. You mean I become an extremely powerful political leader? Cool!  
  
Calvington leaned against the desk and pocketed his laser hand-rifle. Where to begin? At 2027, the Third War? Or 2127, the Fourth War? He sighed and just allowed his tongue to lead his word were they should go.  
  
In 2024, the people of the United States, in their infinite wisdom, elected Ohio Senator Morris Chase the President, Calvington noticed Calvin's eyes grow wide with a mixture of horror and curiosity, President Chase spend most of his time saber-rattling, fighting a small ground war in Korea with US troops that always threatened to boil over into a nuclear exchange between China, North Korea, and the United States. The South Koreans has US missle silos in their territory, and for the first two years of the war there was really no advancement on either side of the De-Militarized Zone set up by President Truman after the Korean War of the early 1950's.   
  
In 2027, five hundred thousand Chinese soldiers were sent to fight for the North Koreans. The new servicemen added enough of a push that the North managed to break past South Korean and US lines and march to Seoul. Secretly, the Chinese managed to gain a military pact between themselves and the Russian Federation, simply stating that if China was bombed the Americans, the Russians would attack the United States.   
  
President Chase bungled his way through this, fired his Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense. He asked for, and recieved, the resignation of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Vice-Chairman had a stroke while dealing with the crisis. Chase then ordered a nuclear strike on Beijing. It wasn't too long before the United States was devastated. Every major city had been destoryed, LA, New York, Cleveland, Chicago, Richmond, Washington, Seattle, Charleston, Atlanta... Calvington's voice trailed off slowly, then he continued,  
  
Our of the ruins of the world, there emerged leaders, nominally military, who managed to seize portions of territory, or entire countries. In our case, it was Lieutenant General Calvin Jonathan Watterson, who lived in this city, a suburb of the ruined Cleveland. Within a year, Watterson, you Calvington reminded the six-year old, perhaps unnessacarily, Had formed the Cal-American Confederacy, and rebuilt what was left of the United States.   
  
In other parts of the world, democracy was shunned, General Hisham al-Jabari unified the Mideast and formed the People's Empire of Byzantium. Former Communists created the Neomarxist Republic of London in the British Isles. Russia and China divided into countless numbers of different nations. New Zealan invaded and took over Australia...  
  
By the year 2100, most nations were moving towards republicanism, the Cal-American Confederacy, despite having a number of inept presidents, stood strong among the world. But, the first hours of the Twenty-Second Century only a year later brought forth a much worse blight upon our planet. The invention of antimatter weaponry by Admiral Cicero Thompson and the Cal-American Navy Research Department spawned a new age of terror. These weapons could destroy entire regions of land, sinking it into the ocean, or wipe out people, places, and things. Not a noun left in the area.  
  
In 2127, President Sam Quentyn used these weapons against Japan, London, and Byzantium, nuclear strikes were done in retaliation. Our nation, our world, was again destroyed. But this time another hope came, not via a great leader, but through Operation Wells, a time travelling device we gleans from the journals of former President Watterson, journals he wrote when he was six and seven years old.  
  
At this point Calvin looked over haughtily at Hobbes, _I told you they'd be valuble!_  
  
Calvington just raised an eyebrow and charged his story forward, Here I am, I came here, and I don't know why. It was a prayer of sorts...that perhaps, per chance, you could help me out.  
  
Hobbes just looked blankly at the other Hobbes and blinked, You didn't happen to say the President who launched nukes at the Chinese was a Morris Chase did you?  
  
Calvington nodded, A horrible man, who did a horrible deed. Oh, maybe it was justified, but-  
  
Hobbes cut him off with a wave of his paw, And you said he came from Ohio, didn't you?  
  
Calvington nodded, not knowing how to respond.  
  
Hobbes simply stared Calvington in the eyes, deeply, as if wanting to look through his pupils and into his mind, read the information there and decide if he was trustworthy. At length, Hobbes nodded affirming whatever he was about to say, He lives on this street.  



End file.
